Arbitrary and capricious supervisors, heavy and often unjustified criticism, petty rule-making, rapid staff turnover resulting in unnecessary medical errors. Management seems incapable of seeing the relationship between a constant turnover of staff, heavy patient load, and unexplained directives, on the one hand, and a high level of mistakes resulting from staff inexperience and patients assigned to hospital wards before their medical problems have been stabilized. At the same time, upper level administrators are awarded hefty bonuses while basic supplies and equipment--pencils, blood pressure cuffs, and the like--are unavailable.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Floyd Memorial needs a union, preferably allied with SEIU, providing a grievance committee empowered to resolve management issues. Management seems more obsessed with avoiding negative criticism than with tracing problems to their source and resolving them. Hence a vicious cycle: patient levels are too high, nurses burn out and quit, new grads take their place and work the minimum 6 months needed to leave for another hospital, leading to higher patient loads and burnout.